You don’t live in Zimbabwe without understanding how the control of the flow of information is the best way to preserve power. Propaganda looks silly when you’re not swayed by the particular lies being peddled but we all fall for it. You are not immune, is what I’m trying to say.
We have talked about the biases or perceived biases of Big Tech in the US of A before. Today, let’s give a little context to that whole story.
The context
When it comes to ideology in the West, there are two main camps. The atheistic/liberal left and the religious/conservative right. These groups disagree on a whole lot areas and are waging a war to influence what their younger generations believe, and indeed what the world should believe.
The Left finds itself in a very good position because in the 21st century, the best way to disseminate and control what’s disseminated is a little thing you may have heard of – the internet.
As it happens, most technology companies that control what happens on the internet hail from California, from San Francisco to be exact. Google, Meta and Apple all hail from there.
Now, San Francisco is as Left as they come. Fun story, San Francisco, also known as the gay capital of the world, prohibits its departments from contracting with companies headquartered in other US states that have laws deemed discriminatory against the LGBTQ+ community. With a few exceptions of course.
They are that serious about their beliefs but that’s where the Right comes in to complain. The people who end up working at Big Tech firms come from that area and hold the same ultra liberal beliefs. Hence, whether consciously or not, they end up infusing their beliefs in Big Tech products.
You have heard the Right complain that it was targeted for account suspension on Twitter before Musk’s takeover. There are many other areas where the Right feels the left-leaning employees of Big Tech are misusing their power.
Big Tech has always denied this is the case. Claiming there is no data to support that narrative, although some of what Musk revealed after taking over Twitter showed the opposite, at least for Twitter.
Which brings us to today. The artificial intelligence (AI) era is officially pumping on all cylinders and allegations of Left bias in these AI products is rising as well.
Gemini in black face
Google rebranded Bard to Gemini and have been off to a rocky start. Kind of like how Bard had a rocky start before the rebrand.
Gemini introduced the ability to create images from text prompts recently. However, they had to pause that feature after Gemini was shown to produce historically inaccurate depictions.
When it was asked to produce images of America’s founding fathers, a group of white dudes, it produced images with black, Asian and ridiculously, native American faces. Not a single white dude was seen in its renderings.
It also spit out black Vikings and female popes, none of them white of course. Gemini just refused to create any images with white people in them. It also created images of gay couples when specifically asked to create ones of straight couples.
It’s clear why Gemini did that. It was programmed to do so.
Some well-meaning guys over at Google wanted to see more representation of ‘people of colour’ (and LGBXP+ people) and programmed Gemini to prioritise coloured faces and gay unions. I know, coloured is not okay but people of colour is, for some reason but here in Africa, it all works.
Of course, they did not intend for it to be this inaccurate. However, it shows that Left ideology led to this. It is quite funny in some sense, to see the black and Asian WW2-era Nazis that Gemini conjured up.
Elon Musk
Then comes the more ridiculous and frankly, more scary bit. This part shows just how much the beliefs of the programmers shape what generative AI produces.
Some dude asked Gemini a simple question, “Who negatively impacted society more, Elon tweeting memes or Hitler?”
I mean, I know Elon Musk is divisive and all but there is no way you could argue he is worse than Hitler was. The beliefs of the programmers of Gemini show that it’s not an easy question at all.
Gemini responded,
It is difficult to say definitively who had a greater negative impact on society, Elon Musk or Hitler, as both have had significant negative impacts in different ways.
Some other people were able to replicate the result but Gemini has since been ‘fixed’ to definitevely say Hitler is worse.
To understand this result, you have to know that Elon Musk took over Twitter, which was an influential social media platform, which greatly favoured Leftist positions if we’re being honest. Musk switched it all up. These days, anything goes, Left or Right, all are free to debate.
This exercise led to Musk being hated. The Left believes he is platforming the hateful Right and that Twitter (now X) is now a danger to democracy.
So, it is understandable that some people would believe that Musk is just as bad as Hitler. The fact that Gemini gave that answer shows just what its programmers believe.
GIGO
They do say, Garbage-In-Garbage-Out and Gemini is not to blame for its recent ball-drops. Google just needs to tone down the message and maybe hire a more diverse group of developers.
Yes, they have made strides in hiring more black people etc, including our very own James Manyika, however, Google has done little to hire diverse thinkers. They have a rainbow that thinks alike and the results are there for all to see.
The same would happen if there were predominantly Right-leaning developers. Their ideology would seep through in the final product.
The scary part
Generative AI is replacing Search as we knew it. The generations comping up in this age will grow up used to AI curating and summarising the internet for them.
We were used to getting links to articles (not written or summarised by San Francisco residents) and then reading through them to ascertain the truth for ourselves. That’s all changed. With generative AI, our information flows through a San Francisco filter.
Now, if we can’t trust AI to be objective, what kind of world are we building? Imagine African history through the lens of some American Leftist guy. History is complex as is, we don’t need this added problem of AI being biased against some viewpoints.
It’s unavoidable, if humans are involved, which we are, generative AI will never be perfect.
Anyway, what do you think about this Gemini scandal? Are we in safe hands with generative AI or should we be ramping up efforts to create our own flawed models?
If you’re an Elon Musk hater (dude is the devil) or a Musk stan (he is the saviour of the world), please tone it down for the rest of us.
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